Ladies of the House

by Lauren Edmondson

  The groom, tuxed, sweaty, stood before a makeshift altar draped in cascading roses, looking very much like a sixty-eight-year-old doing his best to look fifty. He ran a dinosaur of a law firm and had a reputation that had just as many black smudges as you’d expect from a formidable lawyer in this town. His daughter and I happened to play tennis together in high school, and our parents spent countless hours on the bleachers dissecting our backhands. When the bride walked down the aisle in a strapless gown I swore I’d seen at a wedding last summer, I thought of Mac’s ex-wife, and how lovely she’d always been to me. There’d been a game, long ago, when I’d double-faulted match point. I’d been furious with myself, ready to quit the sport entirely, but Louise had come to my side with kind eyes and tissues and a chocolate chip cookie about the size of my racket head. I hadn’t thought about this in a long time. At weddings, like at funerals, where there is such emphasis on tradition, where old friends gather, where families make nice, the current of my thoughts always seems to flow backward, into the past.

  During the first scripture reading, Atlas dropped down in the chair beside me and apologized. “Work,” he whispered. “You look great. What did I miss?”

  I beckoned him closer. “The groom is as old as my father and the bride is as young as Wallis. Neither of them wanted us here. Also, no one in attendance has made eye contact with me, except this nice couple to your left, who are from Grand Rapids, Michigan. When I introduced myself, they asked if I was named after the sour cream brand.”

  “Don’t tell Cricket,” Atlas said dryly. “She’d be so sad to hear people are associating her daughter with a condiment.”

  “Is sour cream a condiment?”

  “I think so,” Atlas said. “Like mayonnaise.”

  “Then, no, we will not tell Cricket. I love your bow tie, by the way.”

  He lifted his chin proudly, showing off the very bright Union Jack pattern around his collar. “Black tie optional, they said. I prefer other options.”

  We were shushed by the nice people next to us, and I made it about two minutes before starting up again. This couldn’t wait. I tilted my head toward him. “Have you heard who Wallis is dating?”

  “Who?” Atlas asked.

  I shared the name. Atlas’s eyes widened. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “fuck me.”

  This earned us another shush, and a few stern looks. I lowered my voice. “Exactly my reaction. And I’m sure the reaction of most everyone at the Hay-Adams tonight. He’s here, too.”

  “No,” Atlas said, dubious.

  “Yes. They’ve only been dating two weeks. But Wallis prepared herself for this like it was prom.” Meanwhile, I’d worn my plainest little black dress, hoping to just melt into the background. Shifting to more amusing subjects, I gestured toward the altar, where the groom was presently looking between his bride’s vertiginous veil, the waterfall of flowers behind the officiant, and the packed rows of guests, as though he couldn’t quite believe the pageantry. “I went to college with one of those bridesmaids,” I told him, sighing exaggeratedly, pretending to be sorry for myself. “I doubt she’ll invite me into the photo booth later.”

  “I’ll go in the booth with you,” he said. “I hope there are props. I love a big, fake mustache.”

  He made a mustache with his finger, while I pretended to adjust a top hat. “Do you think Uncle Mac will notice I bought the cheapest thing off his registry?” I asked.

  “Salad tongs?”

  “Cheese knives.”

  Atlas smothered his laugh in his suit sleeve. “Miss Sour Cream Richardson,” he eventually whispered, “I am so happy I get to be here for this.”

  * * *

  I’ve mastered the art of getting in and out of parties within fifty-five minutes, an appropriate amount of time to make the rounds and not appear rude. It’s relatively straightforward: you nibble on a cube of something, take a few sips, remember names of children and—this is important—use their social media to inform questions without revealing your source. For example: Traveled anywhere recently? You know they have. They know you know they have. Yet, it is part of the social contract that neither of you admits to knowing.

  At a wedding, from the ceremony to cocktails to speeches and dinner, you’re ensnared for at least four hours, so my only method for surviving, especially this particular one, was to not draw any attention to myself. I hoped to be seated at a high-numbered table, the closer to the bar and the farther away from the dance floor the better. I intended not to slide, shuffle, or otherwise engage in choreographed dancing. I would eat whatever the waiter put in front of me without fuss, even when they inevitably forgot I ordered the vegetarian plate. No hard liquor, thank you.

  With this plan in place, it was distressing when Wallis, having found Atlas and me after the ceremony, stood up on my recently vacated chair and waved across the room to Blake Darley, who was on the bride’s side of the aisle, waiting his turn to exit his row.

  “Wallis.” I tugged at the hem of her dress. It was the color of lemons, and with her pink hair and natural tan, she looked like a piece of candy. “You’ll see him at cocktail hour.”

  But he was already maneuvering his way through the crush to get to our row. They kissed, she stepped down from the chair, they kissed again, his hand alarmingly close to her butt.

  Atlas cleared his throat, and Wallis linked her arm through Blake’s and turned to us, beaming. “You remember Daisy,” she said.

  “Of course.” Blake kissed me quickly on the cheek. “Who showed great bravery during the battle of La Vic.”

  “Hardly.” Now seeing him in daylight, I noticed Blake had the appearance of someone you should know, a movie star or a news anchor. There was an effortlessness about him that made me want to check that my bra straps weren’t showing. “Have you met my friend Atlas Braidy-Lowes? He’s a journalist. Most recently published in GQ and The New Yorker and—what else? Atlas, remind us.”

  “That’s the gist of it.” Atlas was the only person less comfortable with flattery than I. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You’re also a bow tie man,” Blake observed, returning Atlas’s handshake. He then pointed to his own bow tie, which, if I wasn’t mistaken, looked to be monogrammed with his initials.

  Atlas and I exchanged a small smile as we moved slowly down the aisle, trusting the herd to take us in the direction of much-needed cocktails and dinner, to be held on the top floor of the hotel.

  “How unique to hear First Corinthians at a wedding,” Blake said with mock seriousness. “I thought it was an inspired choice.”

  “And should we hyperventilate over these flowers?” Wallis added, skimming her palm over a bouquet attached by a white ribbon to an aisle chair. “Can you believe it? Red roses? In February?”

  “Did everyone see the groomsman on the end?” Blake grinned back at me, and it was winning. “He looked like he had jammed himself into a tux made before the internet.”

  “Can you even call them groomsmen?” Wallis laughed. “I think we should call them groom’s geezers.”

  We found Cricket waiting for us by the elevator bank. Again, Wallis made introductions. Blake hugged my mother like she was his own. When the next car arrived, she, Wallis, and Blake fitted themselves inside with other black-tie guests, a few of whom, I noticed, whispered shiftily. Who could guess what about? I signaled to Cricket that Atlas and I would take the next one, and her expression before the doors closed was tense. Elevators made her claustrophobic. She also wasn’t fond of heights. This wedding was off to a great start.

  While we waited, Atlas asked me what I thought of Blake.

  “He has no worries, obviously, about showing his feelings for Wallis in a room full of people who will gossip about it later.”

  “Did you expect him to be stiff?”

  “I don’t know what I thought. Maybe a little hesitation. A little more discretion.”
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  “For one,” he said, “I expected him to be taller.”

  That made me smile. I hadn’t considered Blake short. He and I were about eye level, but like so many men confident in themselves because the world had given them no reason not to be, he carried himself like a celebrity. Another elevator arrived, and we boarded along with another group of guests, this one less openly contemptuous than the previous. “One more thing.” I kept my voice low as we ascended. Now that we’d be sitting down for dinner with Wallis and Cricket, there was something else I needed to tell him. “I haven’t said anything to my family about your Gregory story. Yet. I’m waiting till you have a run date, then I can come to them with all the facts.”

  The elevator dinged at the top floor, and he nodded in understanding. His fingers zipped his lips.

  When we made it through the doors to the reception, we were confronted with towering vases of roses and greenery that emerged from the tables like mushroom clouds. The tables themselves, draped in gold linen, were chockablock with glasses, plates, silver, and tapered candles, and I had a brief, ludicrous flare of worry that someone might set a napkin, or themselves, on fire. I just hoped it wasn’t me.

  “What a spectacle,” Cricket stated when Atlas and I located her, partially hidden by a curtain on the back wall, as far as possible from the doors to the balcony. She was working on a glass of something I suspected was gin. “There’s going to be a lot of dark money on this dance floor.”

  “And schmoozing,” I said, and Atlas chuckled. “So much schmoozing. But how are you? Are you okay?”

  “I go back and forth,” Cricket said. “For the time being, I choose to believe Mac’s side of the story. That he didn’t start up with this woman until after he and Louise separated. That’s the way I can stomach it.”

  “I meant how are you dealing with being on the outs? Like with the people, right over there, giving us the stink eye?” Right on cue, those people—people Cricket once knew, former bridge partners and bunco socialites—having finished sizing us up and down, gave us the pleasure of viewing their glamorous backs.

  “Oh, them,” she said, fluttering a hand. “They’ll get over it once the band provides them with other entertainment.”

  “As my mum would say, They’re just jealous,” Atlas said. “You look spectacular, Cricket.”

  He was correct; my mother had chosen a halter-neck beaded gown that brought out the green in her eyes. Following in Wallis’s footsteps, as she often did, she’d changed her hair, made it a shade lighter, as though she’d been basking in the sunshine rather than in meetings with lawyers and bankers and boxes of tissues. Her nails were red and she’d bronzed her neckline. It was quite the reentrance.

  “Have you seen Wallis and Blake?” Cricket asked.

  “Have we ever,” I said.

  “That’s a tone.”

  “He’s...beautiful, as Wallis said. He resembles his mother. It makes me queasy.”

  “Careful there.” Cricket spotted Wallis and Blake at a high-top table near the bar, and they waved us over. Like a tree grows away from a power line, so the crowd arched away from us as we crossed the room. “You haven’t been too fond of people comparing you to your father. Give him a chance.”

  I let her and Atlas go to the new couple and proceeded to wait uncommonly long for two glasses of champagne.

  “How are you so important that you’re at table seven and we’re exiled to table twenty-one?” Wallis was asking Blake when I joined the group. Outside, the sun was setting, painting the sky behind the White House shades of orange and purple. “What sorority did I have to pledge to get in with the bride?”

  “Kappa kappa blonde,” he said. “Will you miss me?”

  Wallis pouted and he kissed her above her ear. “If they have more than two courses, I am going to be very angry. Can I switch the place cards?”

  “No, Wallis.” I was sharp.

  Her head snapped my way. “Why not? I’d be stealthy.”

  “Do you want to get us kicked out of here?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “God, Daisy,” she said. “What is this, a club? Where’s the bouncer?”

  “She’s in a big white dress, about five feet nine inches tall, one hundred and twenty pounds, currently standing by the shrimp tower and scowling at us. Can’t miss her.”

  Wallis accompanied the bride in giving me a distasteful expression. Blake must have noticed. He tugged at her hand and said, “I can’t let either of you be grumpy. It’s not allowed. The Richardsons are out and about and are not going to let any shade ruin the fun. Right?” He looked at us for confirmation, and we nodded like good soldiers. “Good. Wallis, dance with me until we have to sit for dinner?” And with that, her frown vanished.

  * * *

  All through the first course, Wallis picked at her bread and barely touched her mesclun. She fidgeted through the best man’s speech, which, in her defense, was long and unfocused, and by the time the filets and flounder arrived, she was texting under the table. I tried to engage her with Atlas, mostly because he was working on a story about pot legalization, and I thought it might be of interest to Wallis, who enjoyed an edible every so often. But only one thing was on her mind, no matter how many times I encouraged her to put her phone away.

  Just as the main course was being cleared from our table and the band members—all fifteen of them—came back onto the stage, Blake reappeared, commandeering an empty chair from another table and sliding between Wallis and me. When the cake, thick with buttercream, arrived soon thereafter, Cricket and I ate our individual pieces, then split Wallis’s, too busy, as she was, discussing every topic under the sun with Blake to notice: films, television, sports, preferred pets (would it amaze anyone to learn that growing up, Blake had a series of pedigreed retrievers underfoot?), best breakfast foods (Wallis, waffles, he, eggs Benedict with smoked salmon), correct and incorrect footwear for men, the current state of pop music, the legacy of boy bands, and, of course, literature.

  “If you’re anything like your sister, you must have a full bookshelf, Daisy.” Blake turned to me as Cricket and I were fighting over the last glob of buttercream. “Any recommendations? What are you reading?”

  I figured he wouldn’t be interested in any of the paperbacks in my bedside table drawer, so I went with a book that seemed more in his wheelhouse. “Have you read the new one about the presidency in the Gilded Age?”

  He shook his head. “I want to. Can I borrow it after you’re done?”

  Atlas laughed. “Sorry. I’ve claimed that one next. You’ll have to get in line.”

  “You’re a big reader, too, then?” Blake asked Atlas.

  “I read whatever Daisy recommends,” he said, patting my shoulder. “She’s never steered me wrong.”

  “Maybe Daisy and I should just start our own book club,” said Wallis. “I don’t think we’ll be invited into any now.”

  “I despise book clubs,” Atlas said. “I’ve been obliged to join a few, and I have made a promise never to return.”

  “Why do you hate them so much?” Wallis asked him.

  “The conversation isn’t conversation at all. It’s one-upmanship. Before it devolves into people talking solely about themselves and their lives.”

  “I was invited to join one, once, by a girl who worked in the office,” I remarked. “She didn’t call it book club. She called it her Sunday Salons.”

  “The pretension of DC knows no bounds,” said Cricket cheerlessly before excusing herself to the restroom.

  “Sunday salon,” Atlas said, his French accent not too terrible.

  “Sal-LAH,” I said, high Parisian.

  “Atlas.” Blake pointed at my plus-one. “Now I remember. You wrote that story about my mother and her friendship with my godfather. You remember? Melinda Darley and Frank ‘Fracking’ McGill?”

  “I do remember.” Atlas glanced at me
. “Was a few years ago now.”

  “It was so fucking unflattering,” Blake said, straightforward. Wallis mussed with his hair. A warning to back off, maybe?

  “Was it unflattering?” Atlas took a sip of his tea and shrugged genially. “Or is your godfather just a prick?”

  Wallis’s hand paused in Blake’s hair. My glass of wine stopped midway to my mouth. But Blake just threw back his head and laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “He’s a paranoid, self-serving asshole who, I swear, gave me soap in the shape of coal every birthday. In high school, I was Jean Valjean in Les Mis, and he told me—to my face—I couldn’t sing for shit.”

  “I love Les Mis,” said Wallis.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t like you hanging around with us,” I said. “Disgraced daughters of a crooked senator and a bona fide member of the dishonest press.”

  He kissed my sister’s cheek and smiled. “I’m not too worried about appearances.”

  The brass section of the band was having a moment, and further talking became impossible. Atlas scanned his phone unhappily and, when he caught my gaze, mouthed I need to take this. He got up, phone to ear, just as Wallis put her drink aside and pulled Blake to the dance floor. I waved goodbye, then felt awkward about it when they didn’t see.

  I sat alone at the large table with only my coffee, which I take black.

  * * *

  “You should slow down,” I said to Wallis a while later in the ladies’ room. She was fiddling with her bobby pins and smiling goofily in the mirror. She’d taken off her strappy shoes and was now wearing a pair of cheap flip-flops that had been in baskets by the dance floor. She and Blake were having fun, that was clear, but I needed to remind her what was at stake before they got serious. If it wasn’t already too late. “You’re running through conversation topics so quickly that you won’t have anything left, and there will be nothing to do except fall into bed.”